Shibley’s Side Of The Story

Hales’ chief of staff responds to a claim she targeted an HIV-positive employee.

CHIEF COMPLAINT: The city’s draft response to a civil-rights complaint against Mayor Charlie Hales’ chief of staff, Gail Shibley (above), says the “frustrations” between her and a staffer who filed the complaint “seem to stem primarily from differences in style.” - IMAGE: James Rexroad

Portland Mayor Charlie Hales’ chief of staff, Gail
Shibley, is fighting back against allegations she pressured a staffer
into revealing he was HIV-positive and called him a “skank” after he
told her about his illness.

Instead, Shibley says
the employee filed a civil-rights complaint against her only after she
denied him paid hours off from work.

WW has obtained a draft copy of the city’s response to the discrimination allegations, which includes Shibley’s denials.

In the response,
Shibley denies the staffer’s charges. She also provides state
investigators with testimonial letters from friends and colleagues
saying she’s not prejudiced. (Shibley is a lesbian who in 1991 revealed
her sexual orientation, becoming the first openly gay member of the
Oregon Legislature.)

“She submits these
testimonials,” the draft response says, “in an effort to show that the
allegation that she is a person who harbors discriminatory feelings
about people who are HIV-positive or would treat someone unfavorably
upon knowing of their illness is completely unfounded.”

Hales’ office declined to comment on the city’s response.

In the complaint, the
Hales staffer claims Shibley insisted he explain why he had a TriMet
“Honored Citizen” pass, which gives discounted fares and priority
seating to seniors and people with disabilities.

The staffer says Shibley continued to ask him about the pass, and he felt pressured into revealing his HIV status.

In the city’s
response, Shibley tells the BOLI investigator that she never made the
staffer explain why he had the pass. Shibley says another co-worker
asked about the pass—and when Shibley tried to defuse an awkward
situation, the staffer met with her privately.

“He confided that the
reason he has the pass is because he is HIV-positive and expressed that
he felt comfortable sharing that with her because of their shared
experiences being members of the gay community,” the response says.

The staffer who filed
the complaint had previously worked for former Mayor Sam Adams, who is
also openly gay. In the original complaint, the staffer alleges Shibley
made derogatory comments about Adams and him.

“Shibley stated to me
that Adams must have been something of a ‘skank,’ adding that I must be
a ‘skank’ as well, since working for Adams required a different or
special skill set,” the staffer says in the complaint.

In the city’s
response, Shibley “emphatically denies” the staffer’s charge and says it
was the staffer who “made some unflattering statements about the former
mayor.”

The complaint against Shibley is the latest in a series of allegations of misbehavior by Hales’ staff.

The
staffer’s BOLI complaint alleges that the discrimination continued when
other employees in the mayor’s office received paid time off while he
was denied the same benefit.

The city’s response
says Shibley only gave paid time off to two staffers, who had worked
unusually long hours, and suggests that her more conservative allocation
of paid leave is the real motivation behind the civil-rights complaint.

The city document
says the staffer first complained about discrimination to the city’s
Human Resources Bureau nearly eight months after the alleged
incidents—and two months after Shibley denied him paid time off, a bonus
he had received working for Adams.

The staffer complained one month after a second employee in Hales’ office asked him about his TriMet pass.

“Respondent asserts
that as time passed and [the staffer] was challenged to perform his job
differently than how he had performed under Mayor Adams, he began to
resent Ms. Shibley’s style of management.”

The staffer’s BOLI
complaint says city human resources director Anna Kanwit discouraged him
from filing a complaint against Shibley.

The city’s response says Kanwit didn’t try to get him to drop the complaint. Instead, the response says, she investigated it.

“After reviewing the
intake interview and talking to Ms. Shibley,” the city’s response says,
“Ms. Kanwit determined that there was not enough evidence of a violation
of city rules to proceed with an investigation.”

The city says Shibley
didn’t commit a civil-rights violation, but it offers to “participate
in a conciliation process” to heal Shibley’s relationship to the
employee.

That probably won’t happen: The employee has since left the mayor’s office.